Well, the big point for user right privation is "that is good for the economy". Just as most of bad argument, his one is not backed by anything. For instance there is several big company that use gpl. And the whole point of this license is to ensure the rights of the users.
Of course, patent are useful to a degree. But only if they are short, and not too broad.
Define short please? Because a farmacutical company only has 5 years to make money off a patent (they spend a good 15 years of the patent time proving their stuff's actualy safe for use) and most IT-developers have even less time due to the fast developments on that area. Lots of code is outdated within 8 years, not to speak about the technology for creating chips which practicaly has a life time of less then 4 years.
This whole war on user right and his rage of patenting everything is about destroying fair concurrency.
And that in itself is a pretty good thing I think. Let's take the example of Perlin Noise. It was invented in the 80's and never patented. Everyone and their grandmother used and uses it, but it took untill 1999 until the same Perlin invented simplex noise. Why did it take so long? Because there was no incentive to invent something new. The cost of inventing an improved noise function would not wheigh up to the development costs, because nobody could make money off the new noise type while the old one was freely availible.
@Jeengus I do not agree with you : downloading, copying and lending an album to a friend illegally is morally right, buying it is wrong. For me of course, but as we are speaking about morality, you may disagree.
First of all, because these company are fighting a war against your freedom of speech and right to privacy, and it is a lot more important.
In the case of some DRM's, I'll give you the privacy, but Free Speech? Seriously? Free speech as in the right to coppy others work without giving them credit? Sorry, but in this case I have to disagree. Free Speech isn't and can't be the end-all right you make it out to be, for aplethora of practical reasons.
You see, if an idea has no intrisic value, the best course of action is always, at any time, to wait untill someone esle thinks of it and optimises it.
You can either develop that wonderfull new polymer that will make cars safer then ever yourself and spend half a bilion dollars in development cost and building a pilot plant, or you can spend twenty million on a plant your competitor desinged.
You can either spend 3 years writing the best novel you can, or you can make money by actualy doing something that creates value, like scrubbing the street.
You see where I'm going? An idea has intrisic value, because for example, it either makes new things possible (as with the ploymer) or it causes entretainment (as with the book). If, however, the idea is freely replicatable, then that intrisic value can't ever come to benefit the one who optimised it, because he spent time and resources on it. Someone else, who spent no time on optimising it can gain the same benefits, without having invested anything in optimising it. I doubt you'll understand my point, but
it's just not fair and it's going to cause some problems...My second point is that you already pay a tax covering the alleged cost of piracy when you buy a cd or an hard drive.
Were we discussing the fundamental objections to coppyright here, or just the current implementation in some parts of the world?
Good, then at least we can agree that things could be better. But not by removing coppyright as I am trying to show you.
My third point is that you may come to like a song or an album by listening it. Not by listening a mere sample. And then you may come to go to the concert and make the arist earn a lot more money.
That is the reason some artists choose not to enforce their coppyright. But this is no reason to force every musician to give up their rights, let alone forcing writers or inventors to revoke their claim to their intelectual property.
My last point it that you are using a technology that allow you to do so. What is morally wrong is to make money using the work of someone else, without paying him. But not paying for the work of someone else is not wrong. As long as you don't comissioned the job.
.... Seriously? You may not make money directly by pirating something, but you are denying the maker compensation for the value of the intelectual property he created. He invested hundereds of hours in his work and you're taking that time and saying "Fuck you, go work on a farm if you want to make money, because you're not getting mine!"
And fuck all that mainstream art suck anyway. They can die, I surely won't miss them. But I try to contribute FREELY to the art I like, either by choosing to buy artwork, donating or creating.
Touchy are we? Someone stepped on your elitist ego?
I don't see how a software patent is any different from a music 'patent'.
Creating a code language is making a tool, tools are covered by patent.
Creating a game using a programming language, is not worthy of a patent as there is no fundamentally new technology or idea.
Of the content only new artwork should be copyrightable as most stories and plots and settings are mostly recycling.
But the artwork are just an arangment of pixels, that can't be novel! Besides that, all car models are basicly an assembly of plastic and metal, so they shouldn't have been patentable since the time someone made a phone from bakelite, as that's also an arrangement of plastic and metal!
Or let me give another example. If I'd invent a machine that would solve the traveling salesman problem quite rapidly, then I could, according to you, patent it. But if I write a piece of code, it suddenly isn't patentable anymore? Inventing a novel way to code something is as much an invention as creating a new bike chain. A game in itself isn't patentable, first of all because the idea has been around for more then 3 decades, secondly because the ones to make pac-man didn't patent it and thus nobody gets to patent it and lastly because that's probably to broad for a patent. But if the game uses fundamentaly new netcode to reduce lag, then that piece of code should be patentable, because it's an invention.
Patenting ideas was a VERY bad idea IMHO. To return to the bicycle chain; a patent can be renewed by a minor alteration, but nobody else may patent an altered chain?
This is madness.
If you can prove that the alteration is in fact relevant, then you're free to patent the new chain. What I was talking about is irrelevant alterations. To give another example, if you'd invent a new way to make window glass, then coppyright only protects the glass of the same dimensions, while patents protect everything made in the same way. If, however, someone would come up with an even better way to make window glass, based upon your patent, they're free to patent that, because said patent differs on a relevant part.
(Note, this all is only true for the European patent laws, since in the US patent laws, producing something for research is not allowed either. Yes I do think the laws are wonky sometimes, but the idea is sound)
Another example of copyrights madness: I heard P.Steward say he wanted to sue the authors of Red Dwarf once, because the story revolves around a spaceship flying through space. When he actually watched, he realized it had absolutely no similarities to startrek beyond that superficial setting.
Which is exactly why he would have lost the case.
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Topic: Digital Piracy (Read 12791 times)